He kissed her shoulder like it was a formality. A dry, sand-dusted press of lips—quick, impersonal. Then he rolled onto his back, muttering something about how the sun was stronger than he expected. Ryan always underestimated the obvious. Ava lay still, skin warm beneath the bikini she’d bought just for this trip. Red. Cut high on the hips. Supposed to be dangerous. Flirtatious. A test, maybe—not for strangers, but for hi...

Phillipe was excited. He had a job painting the outside of a cabin on a lake. He'd get to stay there for up to three weeks to do the work. As a nineteen-year-old, having a place all to himself for the first time would be novel. He wouldn't have family around to bother him. He could do what he wanted when he wanted. This, he expected, was going to be fun. He envisioned days giving a fresh coat of color to the weathered woo...

The sun, the sand, the waves crashing nearby… This vacation was exactly what I needed after seven months of continuous stress on the job. Lying on my towel on the sparsely occupied beach south of Melbourne, I felt content. Almost completely satisfied. Behind me stretched a wilderness with big bushes, where random birds squawked and squealed. I felt one with nature, until a series of boom boom boom from a music box forced...

Eric was sweet. Good-looking too — tall, sandy-haired, and safe. Safe was the problem. At first, dating him had felt like stepping into the dream — weekend getaways, lazy kisses under the covers, promises whispered late at night. But somewhere between the soft kisses and the clumsy groping, something inside me had started to stir. Something darker. Something hungrier. It didn’t help that his dad, Ray, was around so much....

Claire glanced at the alarm clock on her nightstand. 1:54 a.m. She laughed softly. And then—from the other side of the wall—another sound filtered through. The unmistakable creak of a bedframe. A breathless gasp. Then Amy’s voice, muffled but unmistakable, “Harder— oh my God, Sarah—” Claire slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her giggle. Henry chuckled low in his chest. “Thin walls,” he murmured, pulling her closer. “...

It was barely noon, but the July sun had already turned the air thick and heavy, the kind of heat that clung to skin and made everything move a little slower. Claire was two weeks into helping Henry around his place, scrubbing down patio furniture, organizing tools in his garage, wiping the dust off windows he never bothered to open. It was supposed to be a simple favor for her dad. Henry played poker with him on Thursday...

The sunsets on this island don’t just fade—they transform, spreading their colors slow and deliberate across the sky. Magenta melting into lavender, lavender bleeding into gold, all of it mirrored in the steady glass of the sea. During the day, that sea is blue. Not just blue—endlessly blue, stretching unbroken from horizon to horizon, so vast and untouched it feels more like a painting than something real. And for all th...

The bar was filling out, the buzz of chat and laughter grew louder by the moment and Olivia was still sat by herself, checking her phone in the hope of a message assuring her she hadn’t been stood up, but her notifications remained empty. Embarrassment prickled over her body. She’d brought a new dress for this at her friend’s insistence she start ‘putting herself out there’, but this was proof that the whole thing was a w...